Friday, October 13, 2006

Space Marine Tactical and the las cannon option

Again, this is based primarilly on my playing space marines in the most recent battle, but I'm not quite sure that the las-cannon option for the space marine tactical squad is the best option available.

With a devastator squad, it seems to me, you know what you're doing. You put them in the corner of the board and there they sit. They fire. They don't fire. Either way, you know they are where they're supposed to be.

The problem with the tactical squad armed with the las-cannon is that you're inclined to sit them back like a devastator squad and let all the regular marines sit around doing nothing the enitre battle. That's a lot of people getting nothing done so that you can fire 1 measley las-cannon shot a round. Enhhhh... I'm just not sure it's worth it. Keep in mind, the standard of the tac squad is the sergeant with a really mean hand to hand weapon. So, you have a squad sitting at the edge of the board which will never get into hand to hand armed with a sergeant with master crafted power claws or something like that. That, or you make a squad with a las cannon and you put them in close so the sergeant can attack shit and the las cannon never fires.

I think the heavy weapon in the tac squad sort of has to be viewed as the thing you use if there's no reason to move. The problem is, when that weapon's a las-cannon, you kind of invent reasons not to move.

Obviously, all this is a thing of personal preference, but this is, I think the reason I suck with tactical marines but I love playing Thousand Sons. There's no reason the Thousand Sons shouldn't keep moving forward. After all, they want you in rapid fire range and their sergeant is an absolute bad ass. There's never the whole, "but then I'm wasting a las-cannon shot" to screw up your game.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree 100%. In my tac squads I usually put a plasma gun or meltagun something that can move and fire at close range, a heavy is just kind of wasted in this type of squad. I will usually mount them into a razorback and put either a heavy bolter or a lascannon on that and since they are twin linked this is usually a better option.

Monstro D. Whale said...

I'm with you in spirit, I think. Keep in mind, I play more than five different kinds of armies. I get on kicks. I just left a Thousand Sons kick and now I'm on Ultramarines. I like marines, but I wouldn't consider myself to be an expert at them at all. However, when you play against IG and Dark Eldar you start losing any sort of real love for vehicles. They pop and they die and that's a lot of points to pop and die. You're right about the razor back...technically. But then you don't have to kill a whole squad to get the las cannon to stop firing.

I think the option I prefer is the devastator squad or the dreadnought/predator combo. Either of the two big options for the marines have enough armor that you can kind of wait it out a bit. They're not great, and I know people who have sworn off vehicles for good and to good effect, but if you're going to take heavilly armed vehicles, I prefer that they don't have anything to do with the tac squads. Just buy the tank and let it stand or die on its own. Or if you want to deploy late, buy the dreadnought.

Anonymous said...

True...The best weapon that a marine army gets is the assault cannon. I devised an army with something like 12 assault cannons it was nothing less than dominating. It is the only weapon choice that every squad type can have (black templars would be the faction you would have to play) which is pretty much a sign that it is what is the strength weapon of the army.

Anonymous said...

i agree too, assult cannons are brillant weapons. the rending rule pays for the short range but unfortunaly i've only been able to cram 2 into my army. i also agree with the point about giving tac squads heavy weapons, there useless unless you are defending.